Summer reading is a leisurely, even pleasantly lazy activity, and it may be a little chilling to point out that it may be good for people, too. But the wholesomeness of aestival book-reading may turn out to be vital - particularly for poor, mostly free-lunch-eligible children in Florida, such as the 852 subjects of a three-year study led by two education professors at the University of Tennessee, which will appear in the fall issue of the journal Reading Psychology.
One of the virtues of this research - more thorough, sustained and conclusive than previous studies on the same point - was that the books were more or less self-selected, in the sense that the children chose them at a "fair" with about 400 to 600 titles, on the last day of the school year. In the first year, the students were all in Grade 1 or 2. There were four categories of books: pop culture (about personalities and topics in the mass media); series books (the latter-day equivalents of Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys); "culturally relevant" (89 per cent of the students were black or Hispanic); and "curriculum relevant."
Not surprisingly, such tiresome-sounding relevance was far less attractive than the popular-culture and series books - which is just fine. The habit of reading will not grow from a sense of duty, but from interest and engagement.
The reading ability of the 852 participants was markedly better than that of the 478 control group.
One of the most striking findings is that reading on one's own - say, a leading series book such as Captain Underpants and the Perilous Plot of Professor Poopypants - is as effective for educational success as going to summer school (measured in other studies), and far cheaper. Freedom works - at least in the summer.